Tagged: freedom

American “progressives” portray themselves as “forward-looking,” advocates of a higher and better freedom than the traditional American conception of liberty as freedom from government coercion and control. In fact, they are the intellectual great-grandchildren of the “reactionary” nineteenth century Imperial German “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck.

In the United States, and most of the western world, there is an ideological war with dire physical consequences. It is the war on fossil fuels. But, even if you understand (as I hope my readers do) that energy is central to everything in modern society, the war is much bigger than energy. It is about freedom. It is about control. It is about global governance.

On the occasion of the Vatican’s workshop on global warming, sustainable development and human trafficking, it may be appropriate to remember Pope Benedict XVI’s message of January 1, 2010 celebrating the “World Day of Peace,”

In spite of the great advances in reducing poverty and increasing the freedom and dignity of hundreds of millions of people around the world, the political and cultural climate virtually everywhere around the world is one of anti-business and anti-capitalism.

April 15th is the day that every American is expected to have filed their federal income tax form. Some of us may have done it long before the deadline, some of us will wait until just before the stroke of midnight on April 15th, and some of us may be filing for extensions to defer the actual submission of the full set of income tax-related documents.

On Sunday, April 5, Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara was a guest on the radio show “On The Money” with host Mike Vitoria on 970 The Answer in New York City. Ferrara was on to discuss America’s looming entitlement crisis.

There is in Indiana (and elsewhere) no religious freedom “tension” with respect to their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts. There is only government dramatically overreaching. The Constitution mandates government make no law abridging the freedom of religion. The Constitution mandates government its own self treat everyone equally before the law. The Constitution does not empower the government to mandate that every individual treat every other individual equally.

There was a time when the Supreme Court of the United States defended and upheld the Constitutional protections for economic liberty in America. This year marks the 80th anniversary of one of the Supreme Court’s finest hours, when it overturned Franklin Roosevelt’s agenda for economic fascism in the U.S.

Discrimination has become a “dirty word.” It has come to carry the “politically incorrect” connotation of prejudice, hatefulness, racism, and cruel intolerance towards others in society. There is only one problem: which one of us does not discriminate? Indeed, everything we do reflects discriminating choices and decisions.

Americans are learning the hard way that the federal government should not be permitted to impose one-size-fits-all standards to education. It was never intended to play a role in education and the absence of any mention in the Constitution is proof enough that education was intended to be supervised by the states where the school districts, schools, and parents are closest to the process.

The Barack Obama Administration’s Thursday Internet uber-power grab is awful for just about every American. It will lead to dramatically more expensive Web access – because of both raised service costs and huge new taxes.

A little more than seventy years ago, on March 10, 1944, there appeared in Great Britain one of the most amazing and influential political books of the twentieth century, The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich A. Hayek, which forewarned of socialist trends in Britain and America that ran the danger of leading to tyranny if taken to their logical conclusions.

Very few organizations survive 30 years, and very few people work for the same organization for that long. That makes The Heartland Institute an exceptional organization, and it makes me a very lucky guy.

Just two weeks after reports surfaced that Pope Francis plans to put significant pressure on global leaders to fight what he believes to be manmade, imminent global warming, the leader of the world’s largest church is receiving strong and worthy criticism from conservatives again — this time for suggesting there is a “limit” to freedom of speech in wake of the Paris attacks on magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Islam is not inclined toward any form of modernity and most certainly not toward any form of personal freedom so the world has to remain watchful and, at this point, far less inclined to give its terrorists a pass with the claim they do not represent Islam.

With the beginning of 2015, what might be a “New Year’s resolution” for a friend of freedom? I would suggest that one answer is for each of us to do our best to become “lights of liberty” that will attract others to the cause of freedom and the free society.

As a new year begins, it is easy to consider that the prospects for freedom in America and in many other parts of the world to seem dim. After all, government continues to grow bigger and more intrusive, along with tax burdens that siphon off vast amounts of private wealth.

On December 11th 2014, Senator Tom Coburn gave an emotional farewell address on the Senate floor. In his speech, Coburn reflected on his time as a congressman, explained his worldview, gave advice to colleagues and gave thanks to those that helped and supported him.